You grant the semblance of life and intellect to a corpse, allowing it to answer
several questions that you put to it. You may ask one question per two caster
levels. Unasked questions are wasted if the duration expires. The corpse’s knowledge
is limited to what the creature knew during life, including the languages it spoke (if
any).

Answers are usually brief, cryptic, or repetitive. If the creature’s alignment was
different from yours, the corpse gets a Will save to resist the spell as if it were alive.
If the corpse has been subject to speak with dead within the past week, the new
spell fails. You can cast this spell on a corpse that has been deceased for any
amount of time, but the body must be mostly intact to be able to respond. A
damaged corpse may be able to give partial answers or partially correct answers, but it
must at least have a mouth in order to speak at all.

This spell does not let you actually speak to the person (whose soul has departed). It
instead draws on the imprinted knowledge stored in the corpse. The partially animated
body retains the imprint of the soul that once inhabited it, and thus it can speak with
all the knowledge that the creature had while alive. The corpse, however, cannot learn
new information. Indeed, it can’t even remember being questioned.

This spell does not affect a corpse that has been turned into an undead creature.